How to Draw the Nose - Tutorial
Jul 26, 2009 Drawing, Tutorials
Here is my latest tutorial: how to draw the nose! I have already covered general tips on drawing the nose, now here is a step by step guide to my approach. Hope you enjoy!
1. Start with a good reference photo, as clear and detailed as you can find. Grid it, either digitally or by hand, and grid your paper to correspond. If possible, make a grayscale copy of your reference. This makes it much easier to see differences in tonal value.
2. With an ‘H’ pencil, Lightly draw in all the shapes and contours you can see. Include the outlines of major shadows and highlights. Carefully erase your grid lines with a kneaded eraser.
3. Use your ‘B’ pencil and start blocking in the darkest areas. Don’t think detail yet, just work on filling in some of the space. The shadows right underneath the edge of the nostrils will always be darkest, fading as they move away.
4. Now that you’ve done the shadows, start shading the midtones, working carefully towards the highlights. Try not to get any graphite inside the areas of the highlights, but get a nice smooth transition.
5. Now you can use your blending stick to blend together the different tones. Use short, regular strokes and work from light to dark so you don’t dirty your highlights. If your blending stick gets too dark, wipe it off on a sheet of scrap paper or roll it in your kneaded eraser.
6. Intensify some of the darkest shadows with your ‘2B’ pencil and blend it in.
7. As a last step, use your kneaded eraser to clean up your highlights and lighten any areas that look too dark. Don’t forget about the highlights on the bottom edge of the nostrils!
How to Draw Eyes - Tutorial
Jul 19, 2009 Drawing, Tutorials
Everyone has their own way of drawing eyes and when you’re just learning, it can be very helpful to look at as many different techniques as possible. In this article, I talked about general tips for drawing eyes and provided some links to tutorials on the web. Now, here’s my tutorial.
1. The first step is the reference. Find a reference photo that is clear, detailed, and has a range of lights and darks. This reference image was borrowed from the Image Library at Wet Canvas. You can grid your reference by hand or digitally, whatever works for you. If your picture is in colour, make a grayscale version to show just the values.
2. I grid my paper to correspond with the reference and begin my line drawing with an ‘H’ pencil. This shows not only the placement of the elements of the eye, like the iris and pupil, but also shows the placement of major areas of shadow and light. This is probably the most important part of the drawing, and it’s a good idea to take your time. The more careful you are here, the more accurate your final drawing will be.
3. I erase the grid lines and begin to block in the basic values with a ‘B’ pencil, using these shading techniques. Many people work from light to dark, but in general I prefer to work dark to light. By starting with the darkest values I instantly get a sense of the dimensions of the drawing and can shade other areas accordingly.
I shade overtop of where the eyebrow will be in order to establish the skin tone that will be seen underneath the individual hairs.
4. Now I blend the entire drawing with my blending stick. Here it’s important to work from light to dark, and as your blending stick gets dirty, clean it off on a sheet of scrap paper.
5. You’ll notice that some of the definition is lost through blending. Now I will use my ‘2B’ pencil to go in and add some of the dark details, blending as I go. Pay close attention to the shadow and patterns within the iris, and keep in mind that the crease of the eyelid is not a solid line: it is a shadow that blends out towards the edges.
6. Next I will use my kneaded eraser to create highlights. With a kneaded eraser, it’s best to dab at your drawing instead of rubbing it. This will pick up the graphite, lightening the area without smuding. I add the highlights to the tear duct and along the edges of the eyeball. Of course, depending on the size of your portrait, some of these details may not be visible.
7. Next I use my ‘4B’ pencil to darken the pupil, the outer edge of the iris, the edges of the eyeball and the crease of the lid.
8. Now it’s time for the eyebrow. It’s important to save the hair for last, otherwise you would be trying to draw around it. I used a “4b” for the eyebrows and eyelashes, sharpening it regularly to keep a point. When drawing eyebrows, place your pencil at the spot where the hair starts and flick your wrist to make a short tapered line. Also keep in mind that eyebrow hairs are curved and that they grow in different directions. Those near the nose tend to grow more upwards, pointing out more as you move to the edge of the face. The key to drawing hair is building up layers. For this eyebrow, I did a layer of flicking strokes, then blended it. Then I used my kneaded eraser to pick up a few highlighted hairs, then did more pencil strokes.
9. The last step is the eyelashes. Use the same wrist-flicking motion as you did for the eyebrows to make curved lashes that taper at the end. Make sure your lashes aren’t too thick or uniform. Notice how eyelashes sort of bunch together to come to a point, growing in different directions to cross over eachother. At this point in the drawing, I would go in and touch up any highlights or blending .
How to Grid a Reference Image and Draw From It
Jul 12, 2009 Drawing
I’ll be the first to admit it: gridding is tedious. It’s boring. It’s the last thing you want to do when you have a great idea for your next drawing. But it’s also one of the most important steps and the best way to get a good, accurate line drawing. The time spent gridding your reference is very much worth it. In fact, if you aren’t currently using the grid for your drawings, I suggest you try it. You will see an immediate improvement in the accuracy of your work!
The great thing about the grid is that it allows you to draw anything! You can apply this technique to any type of image, a car, a face, or a flower. The grid breaks a complicated image into small, manageable chunks. By drawing what you see in each individual square, and using the edges of the square to gauge distances, you get a more proportionate representation.
Some might argue that using a grid is somehow “cheating” and that a true artist shouldn’t need one, however the grid technique has been around for a good long time and many of the great master painters used it. Gridding is a tool used for drawing accurately from an image. It can help teach people to see things they would otherwise miss, but there is also great value in drawing from life. Using both of these techniques will be advantageous to your artwork.
Gridding by Hand
The first method of gridding you can do is by hand. This is the easiest and most accessible: all you need is a fine-tipped pen and a ruler. If you’re working from a copy, simply draw the grid right on top of the image. If you are working from an original, you will need to get some kind of acetate or other clear sheet to grid.
There is some math involved… It all depends on the size of your reference and the size that your drawing will be. Grid your paper into one inch squares. Now take the length of your reference drawing and divide it by the number of squares across the length of your paper. This is the size of the grid squares in your reference. For example, let’s say the length of your drawing will be 10 inches, and the length of your reference is 4 inches.
4 divided by 10=0.4
Now you mark the grid lines on your reference at 0.4 inches, and that should give you ten squares across the top. The tricky part is when your reference isn’t proportionate to your drawing. If your drawing is 8″x10″ and your reference is 4″x6,” you will need to trim some off the edges of your reference. An easy way to do this is to take the dimensions of your drawing and keep dividing them until the measurements will fit inside the reference.
8×10 divided by 2 = 4×5
This tells you that you need to trim an inch off the length of your reference to make it proportionate to your page. What you need to remember is that the squares in your grid should be perfectly square, and that there should be the same number of squares in the reference as in the drawing. If not, you’ve done something wrong!
Making your Grid Digitally
I find this to be a much easier and quicker way to grid, but of course it only works if you have access to a computer, the right software, and possibly a scanner if your image isn’t digital already.
You need some kind of software that allows you to have rulers that show inches. I use Corel Draw. Once you know the dimensions you need your reference to be, drag a guide lines from the rulers to create a box that size. Position your image inside of that box and re-size it as needed. I like this way better because it’s easier to move your grid around to find the best composition in the cases where part of the reference needs to be cropped.
Once you have your image positioned inside the correct sized box, use a line drawing tool to draw in the grid lines. At this point my reference is usually in gray-scale, so I use a mid-tone gray line that will stand out against the lights and the darks. Make sure the lines you use are quite fine. Remember that a wide line will cover up portions of the image that could be important. When you draw your picture on a bigger scale, the missing portions get bigger too.
Print your image and you’re ready to go!
Drawing from the Grid
Once your drawing paper and your reference is gridded, you can start the actual drawing! You can do this by drawing one square at a time, making sure things line up at the edges. You can also do this by drawing the major shapes, but doing it slowly, making sure that your lines pass through the grid at the right points. If I’m drawing the an eyelid, for example, I look at my grid square and mentally divide it in half, and half again if I need to. That way I can see if the eyelid crosses the grid-line at the middle of the square, or in one of its quarters.
When doing your basic line drawing, don’t just draw the nose, eyes and mouth. Look for the shadows around these features as well. Outlining the major shadow shapes will help you big time when it come to the shading. Also, very lightly define the highlights as well, so you know where to shade up to.
The main thing is to use your grid. You spent all that time working on it, make sure you look at it!
Tags: better drawings, drawing tips, getting started, portraits, proportions, shading
How to Draw Ears
Jul 9, 2009 Drawing
This is the last in my series on drawing the various facial features. I’ve covered the eyes, mouth and nose, now it’s time for the ears! I don’t have a huge amount to say about drawing ears, but they can’t be over looked. Ears are quite delicate, complicated shapes, and it can be easy to try to oversimplify them rather than work through the complexities. Ears, though, are essential to drawing a portrait. Here are some things to consider:
- Ears are like small discs; they have edges that can be seen from the front and back.
- When drawing ears from the front, we often see only the front edge and part of the inside folds.
- The ears are made of up fold of skin, kind of like a rumpled blanket. Each fold has its own shadow and highlight.
- The inside of the ears are sometimes shinier than the rest of the skin, so the highlights may have a harder edge.
- On the other hand, make sure the shadows are soft. Even though you’re working in a small space, the shadows should blend out smoothly.
- Pay close attention to the shadows around the ear as these are what tell us how the ear is attached to the rest of the face.
- Ears are bigger than you might think. The tops of the ears line up with the eyes, and the bottoms of the ears line up with the bottom of the nose.
On the Web
Again, Stan Prokopenko has an amazing tutorial about drawing ears.
Tags: better drawings, draw ears, drawing tips, getting started, portraits
How to Draw the Nose
Jul 6, 2009 Drawing
The nose gives many beginning portrait artists a hard time. I think this is because the nose is one facial feature that looks extremely different from what we expect it to. As kids we all drew noses as a backwards comma shape, or a backwards check mark. Or maybe just as a pair of nostrils! These kinds of preconceptions get in the way when trying to draw realistically. With noses, it is essential to look at your reference photo to see where the shadows fall. It is also important to understand the basic structure of the nose. Here are some tips:
UPDATE: View my step by step tutorial on how to draw the nose.
- At its most basic, the nose is a wedge sticking out from the face. The bottom and one edge are most often in shadow. Depending on the light, the nose may also cast a shadow.
- The tip of the nose and the nostrils can be shown by three circles.
- A more complex drawing of the nose includes the keystone-shaped
plane between the brows. This is usually in shadow. Below this shape, the nose is narrowest, widening at towards the bottom at the nostrils. - Hilights are usually found on the tip of the nose, the edge of one nostril, and down the bridge of the nose.
- Because we are seeing the nostrils at an angle, we don’t see the whole opening. Nostrils usually appear as just a curved line, or
sometimes as a bit of a triangular shape. - Don’t be worried if your nose only seems to be defined on one side. Depending on how the light hits the nose, the one side may be in shadow while the other side seems to blend right into the rest of the face.
- Don’t forget that underneath the tip of the nose and the bottom edge of the nostrils will be in shadow because they slant down towards the face.
Keep these guidelines in your head while you’re drawing and your noses will appear much more realistic. Most importantly, get rid of your ideas about what a nose should look like and really study your reference! All the information you need for a great portrait is there, you just need to look for it!
On the Web:
Stan Prokopenko’s blog has an excellent tutorial on how to draw a nose. He goes into great detail about the structure and anatomy of the nose.
Tags: better drawings, draw nose, drawing tips, getting started, portraits
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